351:2 -- Exploring the North-West Isle
Exploring the North-West isle. Summary The Captain of the Imperial Frigate Seahawk recently saw an unknown ship in the vicinity of the island northwest of Whitmouth. While he attempted hailing it he lost it after it sailed around the corner of the island. He has expressed his suspicions that the ship belonged to foreign spies or pirates and that they may have set up a base on the island. Due to this the Governor's Guard has posted a reward of 500 coins (to be split amongst the party) for any adventurers who will investigate the island on the Guard's behalf. Halek's report The six of us had agreed to go investigate the island to the north-west after a ship had been seen heading around the coast of it. When the Captain of the Seahawk was unable to communicate with whomever was aboard he became suspicious that it was spies or pirates and could be setting up a base that should be looked into. 500 coins (split though it would be) seemed like a good return for a short boat ride and a few days wandering through an islands forest. We decided to head across the island to the bay on the other side and apart from a small incident with a river things went well enough. Right up until we came to a cliff face and found a dead man at the bottom of it. Drummond, Steve, Rogue, and Cadeus all headed down the short drop by rope to investigate his death (and see if there was anything valuable) while Aziz and I stayed up top to keep an eye on the forest and other things. The man was heavily tattooed, had an emblem upon his chest that none of us claimed to recognise, and apart from a few rings and such didn't seem to have much of interest on him. After a short span of the cleric interrogating the dead man and the rocks the corpse began to move. Steve took care of that by telling it to get back down, right up until someone chose to mutilate the corpse in a misguided attempt to keep it still. With the corpse decapitated the tattoos began to wend about the body, and slowly came off the body. After a short while Steve started trying to make a fire and Rogue had vanished somewhere, while Drummond and Cadeus confronted what had been the tattoos as it moved towards them. Drummond lost a hand after the now smoke like thing enveloped his warhammer and part of his arm before he managed to yank himself away from it. Cadeus was also slowly enveloped in the stuff, with it climbing up his leg, although he'd learnt from Drummonds misfortune and didn't try to get away. Steve got distracted from his fire-starting by speaking to the thing so I joined the group on the lower level and made an attempt to start the fire Steve had been working on. I came close to being enveloped as I was doing so, if not for Steve getting in-between it and myself (and it wanting to avoid him) I'd almost certainly have been the next victim. However, I got the fire started at the same time I was reached, and the warmth of the fire was a more appealing meal(?) for the thing than I was. After watching the thing and the fire entwine and grow high the fire started to get overwhelmed and it was about then we saw an eagle fly in, grab the biggest branch from the fire I'd started and fly off with it until it was quite some distance away, where the branch was dropped. I expect the rest of the group figured it was Eagle, but I knew immediately that it wasn't, Aziz had obviously changed his form to aid in his descent and realised that the fire would only distract the thing so long. (I don't know what should be done, but anyone finding an animal tattooed at all should be very worried.) As we set about organising ourselves Steve took a moment to heal Drummonds missing hand, making a little mistake somewhere, such that he ended up giving Drummond his own hand. While I'd been up top and looking around I'd noticed that the nearby mountain was not exactly as it ought to have been, something was shimmering and not just the way I've seen things shimmer by a desert. After I mentioned that we decided to go see what was causing it, apart from Aziz who went flying off towards the ship that he had spotted in the bay we'd expected to find the ship in. Rogue walked into the side of the mountain and disappeared, calling out to us moments after to let us know that there was a tunnel. Following her in we found ourselves in a tunnel that quickly proved to be full of small pit traps, Rogue falling into one, and I into another as I tried to find the trigger point for it. Steve and I got better acquainted when he dropped in beside me, which let Rogue out of the one she'd fallen in. We finally got mostly sorted, although Drummond had fallen into another that Rogue and Cadeus made an attempt to get him out of. They decided to go explore the tunnel that connected to it and Steve and I made our way to the other end of the tunnel, that Drummond had indicated we should examine. At the end of that tunnel Steve and I found ourselves overlooking a round room with a lava pit and stairs around the edge to a platform in the middle with a giant doorway on it. Steve mumbled something and then told me that he had to kill the guy in the middle of the six that were down there. Not really surprising me when the guy was wearing robes, holding a staff, and chanting something. Restraining Steve as he was about to run down the stairs I tried to shoot the guy in the head but only managed to graze him, leading to the obvious minions running up the stairs to meet us. I managed a little damage to one of them before they got to me and heard fighting behind me as Steve dealt with the three that had run up that side. Drummond, Cadeus, and Rogue entered the cavern, dealing with the other of the minions I had fighting and leaving me to look around for Steve, they told me he'd fallen into the lava while taking one of the minions with him. I took another shot with my bow at the robed guy and when my arrow stopped a foot from his head I let my companions know that we needed to kill him. The fight down there was almost disastrous, and something huge was trying to exit the portal formed by the doorway, but we eventually managed to get our foe into the lava and things in the cavern started heating up as the lava began to rise. The four of us headed back up to the entrance, now knowing what to avoid in the tunnel and met Aziz back at the boat a couple of days later. Even if there had been any more to deal with on the island I don't think any of us wanted to wait around and deal with the changes in the mountain. Aziz informed us of a boat that had disintegrated while he was checking it out, the timing was such we concluded it happened at the same time we'd thrown the robed fellow into the lava. Category:Actual Play Category:Shadows